Day of Rest

I heard Lou Murray beat his girlfriend blind on Thursday and I spent the next three days not sleeping, not showering, just driving the unlit streets.

I saw Lou on Sunday morning buying a case of Miller Lite and some franks for the Saints game. I got him to my car by flashing my badge.

“I’m clean as a pastor’s sheets, Jari,” Lou tells me.

“I got evidence on you right here,” I said and opened the cruiser’s trunk and when he looked into the empty space, I hit him with a brick until his eyes quit trying to open.

By noon, I had him set up in his one-barrel shotgun house.

I laid him by the gold skirt he’d bought his girl. I taped his neck down next to the cell phone he’d sent 200 threats and 400 apologies from. I spread under him the flannel comforter they’d slept together through 5 domestic battery charges and 2 hospital visits.

By six, I took Lou apart.

I dumped the scalpel I’d slit his knees’ tendons with into the sewer grate where the kids splash around in sepsis. I kept the blowtorch that burned his fingers off. I washed the pliers I’d removed his eyes with.

By eight, I joined Hakk on our couch.

“I taped the game you missed,” Hakk said.

But when he offered me a beer, my mind couldn’t stay blank. When he paused the game three times to ask what was wrong, I couldn’t tell him. When he slid his arm around me, it felt like a flannel comforter, and I shrugged it off.

“I’m going to sleep,” Hakk said at last, headed for our bed.

“You would,” I said.

I lay down on the couch and stared at the unlit streets until my eyes were sure they would stay blank and finally closed.

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Established in 2011, Shotgun Honey provides crime fiction lovers a regular diet of flash fiction. Living by the simple tenet of keeping it lean and mean, Shotgun Honey has published over 800 flash fiction stories from more than 400 authors from around the world.